Bank of Happiness

The Bank of Happiness (www.onnepank.ee), based in Estonia, is a social network with a difference. Instead of being a wholly virtual community, it aims to bridge the gap between the real and online worlds and make a real difference to its users’ quality of life.

Many online social enterprises that have appeared over the past few years would make similar claims. However, the Bank of Happiness’s approach makes it stand out from the competition.

The Bank of Happiness focuses its operational model on the doing of good deeds. It brings together individuals who have ideas, information and skills with those who are seeking help. Currently, each real-life good deed that is done as a result of a Bank of Happiness contact is rewarded with a Star of Happiness – a unit of the network’s virtual currency. In future, it is hoped that users will be able to access more tangible rewards.

The Challenge

The founders of the Bank of Happiness faced a series of technical challenges when setting up the network. Because the activity on the network overlaps with real life, it demands an extra level of complexity over and above that needed by networks that operate entirely online.

As Bank of Happiness team member Birgit Tolmann puts it, “the site is a new approach to networking, where the social interaction with identification online is followed by a physical interaction - completing the good deed in person.”

The Solution

Modera integrated its Webmaster Professional CMS into Onnepank.ee to create a customised interface that uses xHTML and Ajax to create live, dynamic pages in line with the standard set by social media industry leaders such as Facebook and Twitter. The technology manages a powerful search function for matching user profiles along with offer and time-frame data. That, in turn, is integrated with the Google Maps API to allow users to view the location of individuals offering good deeds.

The Results

Because of Modera’s commitment to clean, high-quality, valid code, Bank of Happiness serves search engine friendly xHTML, giving its pages the best possible chance in the competitive social search space.

According to Modera CEO Siim Vips, “the most challenging part of the project to release the social network on time and to coincide with initial marketing and PR activity. From a design point of view, much was invested in the usability of the site to build a user-friendly community feel, although the actual production time to deliver it was reduced because of the clear documentation and wireframes that were made available to us.”

In addition, thanks to Modera’s input, Bank of Happiness is the first social network to use digital identification (e-signature) technology, so that community members can be confident that offers of good deeds that come their way are genuine. Estonia led the way with digital identification during the Estonian election of 2008, and the technology is now used by Estonian banks. This means that it is a simple process for Estonians to sign up, make offers and receive good deeds based upon a system that has become intuitive for them to use.

“We chose Modera to build the Bank of Happiness community and social network due their experience in delivering large and challenging projects on time and within budget,” concludes Birgit Tolmann. “Now our social network and community has settled in a beta form, we will be using Modera’s platform to market the service and build its presence to share the concept and goodwill of the Bank of Happiness in other regions.”